What is the RSRS?
The Roadmap for Safer and Resilient Schools (RSRS) is a step-by-step guide intended to provide support to governments of developing countries that are exposed to natural hazards. Specifically, it focuses on the design of intervention strategies and investment plans to make schools safer and resilient at scale. The guide also encompasses the recovery and reconstruction of school facilities affected by disasters.
The RSRS aims to promote cooperation among stakeholders involved in the planning, design, and implementation of risk reduction programs across large stocks of school facilities. Key stakeholders in this effort are school infrastructure managers, relevant government agencies, ministries of finance,[1]the World Bank, and other international financing institutions (IFIs) and development partners. The RSRS stems from the experience of World Bank task teams working in this field.
[1] Not all national governments have ministries. The term is used generically throughout this guidance note to refer to government departments or agencies.
Why the RSRS?
Understanding disaster risk in school infrastructure typically involves at least three levels of complexity: multidimensional risk factors, multistakeholder environments, and issues relating to scale.
In this context, the decision-making process requires a structured dialogue through which stakeholders can achieve consensus around the roots of the problem, attain an understanding of the potential consequences of future hazard events, and identify opportunities to reduce risk.
Creating this enabling environment allows policymakers to make more informed decisions about investments and policy reforms that will lead to safer and resilient schools at scale.
Whom is it for?
We expect the primary users of this guide to be government officials responsible for school infrastructure management and task teams from IFIs and development partners (such as the World Bank) with an interest in school infrastructure.
Practitioners, professionals, and researchers may also find in it useful concepts and content regarding disaster risk management and reduction with respect to school infrastructure.
Context of application
The RSRS takes into account both normal and post-disaster conditions. The former refers to risk reduction intervention plans, while the latter refers to plans for the resilient recovery and reconstruction of school infrastructure affected by hazard events.
Since “risk reduction” and “resilient recovery and reconstruction” are conjoined, the guide approaches the two conditions in parallel. It also addresses considerations related to reconstruction planning.
Structure of the RSRS
The Roadmap consists of eight steps that follow a logical sequence from diagnosis to analysis and planning at scale.
